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Not sure what that has to do with the rest of the world. The dude pushes the US and Europe around, but if they cut off his trade supplies his people would all die by Spring. Russia is a wasteland other than the oil under it's dirt. I understand that's the number one resource, but the rest of the land is incapable of producing anything else yet he still finds a way to get what he wants from the Middle East to Europe to the US.

Again, I'm not endorsing the guy, but if you think about it the guy has one chess piece and uses it to perfection.

I mean the guy is in the midst of having another round of major sanctions thrown on him because his asymmetrical tactics bit him in the arse. I'm not exactly sure he is quite the master tactician he and some of his fangirls like to make him out to be. Though I have to give him credit for his carefully choreographed propaganda photo-ops he routinely releases, they seem to make an impression on a number of people.

His country lacks the power to exert the sort of military force it once could so he has adapted those asymmetrical tactics, which, if you were to judge him by what that has produced, which is the current sanctions and blowback, it has not exactly worked as intended.

Domestically he has failed to get the economy on track, They have a GDP that is roughly half that of Britain for example. And that domestic stagnation is largely why he focuses his robust state propaganda on building up narratives about external foes and internal culture wars. Which, to be fair, even if you discount out fluffed poll numbers, has worked. Though with the world steadily moving toward greener energy, the one play Putin has had to carry his country sputtering along economically does have a shelf life that will decline over time.

His tenure as autocrat has always been more tenuous than is signaled, he has to balance appeasing the mafia style oligarchs, an oftentimes unaccountable security state, with a populace that is deeply harmed by them. Oligarchs and a security state which are the defacto power centers in some territories like in many Asian-Russian territories. Leaving him interlocked in a fragile and somewhat poisonous relationship indefinitely. He's been really good at enriching himself though. That is by far his greatest success.